When I went to college I helped my psychology professor with an unusual task: catching pigeons in an attic.
The pigeons were to be captured and trained to peck at tiny lighted disks in a Skinner box to uncover the secrets of reward and response.
Our job was to sneak into the darkened attic of the faculty hall, long after hours, and creep up to a pigeon unawares. And then, cut the lights. Pigeons don’t move in the dark, and all you had to do was grab the bird and put him in the sack.
Only it’s not that easy to thrust your hand into the darkness and risk getting pecked and flapped at.
So I hovered my hand ever so slowly in the blackened room. I thought, I must be directly over his head. I can’t clamp down, no, not now. In fear, I moved my hand in farther and farther.
Then the scared bird suddenly took flight, and in a fury of flapping wings, grazed my head in revenge.
My prize was gone.
In a quick moment, in one of those insights that comes rarely in a person’s life, the thought – or maybe a voice – came to me, “This is going to be a metaphor for your life. Your prize is right there. Just grab it.”
That’s how it is so often in our lives, in our struggles for the prize. How often is the answer to a thorny problem right in front of us?
If you are in business, you deluge yourself with tons of helpful advice. Yes, it’s all good. But there comes a time to pull the trigger.
We’ve read enough. Thought enough. If we listen, the answer bubbles to the surface.
And then it’s time to grab the booty.
